{"id":303940,"date":"2025-11-24T14:59:20","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T14:59:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/303940\/"},"modified":"2025-11-24T14:59:20","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T14:59:20","slug":"former-heavyweight-champion-says-evander-holyfield-didnt-deserve-to-win-the-title-4-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/303940\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Heavyweight Champion Says Evander Holyfield Didn&#8217;t Deserve To Win The Title 4 Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.secondsout.com\/topic\/evander-holyfield\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Evander Holyfield<\/a> remains the only four-time world heavyweight champion in boxing history, but one man believes \u2018The Real Deal\u2019 didn\u2019t deserve to accomplish this impressive feat.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.secondsout.com\/news\/holyfield-on-best-tyson-lewis-foreman-bowe\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Holyfield cemented his status as one of the best heavyweights of his generation<\/a>, rising to stardom during an era that produced the likes of Riddick Bowe, Michael Moorer, Lennox Lewis and Mike Tyson.<\/p>\n<p>He became the first fighter ever to win the undisputed world championship at both cruiserweight and heavyweight, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/boxing\/story\/_\/id\/40152003\/tyson-fury-vs-oleksandr-usyk-live-boxing-results-analysis\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">a record that remained unmatched until May of 2024.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Another memorable night in the career of Holyfield came in August of 2000 when he defeated countryman John Ruiz via unanimous decision to capture the vacant WBA world heavyweight title and become the first four-weight heavyweight champion of all time.<\/p>\n<p>The result sparked controversy however, with many people left bemused at the fact that Ruiz didn\u2019t get the nod on the judges scorecards, which read 114-113 x2 and 116-112 in favour of Holyfield.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking shortly after the fight, Ruiz expressed his frustration at the result before claiming he had been the victim of \u2018highway robbery\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was highway robbery without a gun. I won the fight, and he knows I won the fight. I was definitely robbed. I had control of the fight. I am very surprised by the judges\u2019 decision. I don\u2019t know what fight they saw.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ruiz did go on to get his revenge in their rematch just seven months later however, defeating Holyfield via unanimous decision to capture the WBA title and achieve his dream of becoming a world champion.<\/p>\n<p>The American duo fought to a split decision draw in their third and final encounter in December of 2001 to bring an end to their rivalry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Evander Holyfield remains the only four-time world heavyweight champion in boxing history, but one man believes \u2018The Real&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-303940","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}